delSarto -- Robert Consoli

CyborgNYC

Anonymous

In the future we won't be honoring veterans as much as pushing them around in wheelchairs and providing them with high doses of SSRI's and other 'chill out' medications. How many of you folks out there have visited the damaged vets in a VA hospital lately? I rest my case.

Anonymous

nadinada

and may i quote you?Heroes are created by cowards and romantics in order to lift the spirit from depressive realities.War has given us too many excuses to despair and abandon ideals.I prefer to honor the living instead.

MonsieurGonzo

Since 2007, more than 70,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury — more than 20,000 of them this year. “The notion of ‘a wheeled armored constabulary force’ as a prescription for a close combat situation is nonsense.”ref:Afghan insurgents make wreckage of U.S. armored vehicles. Soldiers spoke out of what they said was a heightened concern about their vehicles' vulnerability to ambushes, especially on mountain roads where there's no room for the vehicles to turn around. The hideously expensive ($1+ million USD per vehicle), grossly overweight (7 to 24 tons, depending on the model), modern American armored truck: prone to rolling over because of its high center of gravity; unable to operate off-road, yet susceptible to electrocution of its occupants as a result of hitting power lines; incapable of either fording muddy streams, or traversing most bridges; impossible to air-lift by C-130 aircraft, requiring C-17's (at $750,000. per lift) or specialized sealift and overland carriers; consuming obscene quantities of fuel, even while not moving ~ to sustain all its electronic and life support systems in the middle of a hostile desert…

…unsure of where it's going, yet unable to turn around; by design destined to be used over and over again until expended; unlikely, ever to come home again, whole. I can think of no better metaphor for "our strategy" during this War, than the illusion that a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicle suitable for the purpose of military occupation, exists.

Sherri Munnerlyn

The post assumes we must have wars. Why must we make that assumption? I would like to see a commitment to peace replace our present commitment to endless wars. Such a shift in thinking would honor present soldiers, past living soldiers, and future soldiers.

I agree with the poster who said our focus should be on honoring the living. The hero worship of fallen soldiers we presently engage in primarily operates to encourage more wars, it does not direct us towards peace.